Feral Plague
by Beastbot X
Summary: Optimus Primal's condition is worse than anyone could have imagined. Thirteenth in my Beast Wars series.


Feral Plague  
by Beastbot

_(NOTE: This fic does get a little gory, and the ending is mildly disturbing. As such, this is probably the first of my fics that gets a PG-13 rating.)_

"Wake up, my fellow warriors. A new day has dawned."

Dinobot groaned as his optics flickered on. Yawning, he sat up and stretched, accidentally hitting Silverbolt in the process. As per his code of chivalry, however, Silverbolt didn't complain.

"Be it morning already?" Gryphtron asked, still rubbing his optics as they adjusted to the sudden flood of sunlight.

Tigerhawk chuckled. "Yes, although the sun is just above the horizon presently."

"How can you possibly function with so little sleep!?" Dinobot growled, cranky about being woken up right in the middle of a wonderful dream.

"We can catch up later. Today we must journey on- I have tuned my scanners to his spark, and according to my systems, Optimus Primal is within a couple hours' walk from here."

"Ah, finally," Silverbolt sighed with relief. "We can now awaken our true leader so that he may come and oust Rhinox of his corrupt dictatorship."

"Don't you think you're exaggerating just a little?" Tigerhawk smirked. "I certainly want nothing to do with Rhinox anymore, but he's hardly a dictator. He deceived us for what he thought was a good cause, tragically erroneous as it may be."

"Perhaps," Silverbolt admitted, "But I am very angry at Rhinox presently for separating Blackarachnia and myself from each other. Although it was certainly Blackarachnia's decision to stay behind and I respect that, I cannot forgive Rhinox at the present, and the separation from my love pains me."

"Save me your sentimental tirade," Dinobot hissed. "Besides, I sincerely doubt that Optimus Primal is reachable anymore. After that... incident... in which Megatron managed to corrupt his very spark with the Transmetal 2 nanite technology, this is a long shot, to say the least."

"There must be some of the old Optimus left," Silverbolt said, his tone getting noticeably more emotional. "Surely the nanite technology has not erased every last speck of his personality down to the last byte! We must stay strong, Dinobot, and believe that there is good in everyone- even Megatron."

"Alright, now you're just talking nonsense," Dinobot growled, standing up and transforming into his robot mode. "Besides, if everyone has a good side, then why did you not stay with Rhinox to try to 'convert' him back to being honorable?"

"That's different, and you know it!" Silverbolt burst out. Placing his hand over his face and breathing deeply, Silverbolt forced himself to calm down before continuing. "Rhinox is in a position of too much authority right now to have us try to change his mind. If he doesn't like what we have to say, then he can have his guards throw us out, and that will be the end of that. We would have to corner him and bombard him with the false reasoning behind his decision before we would be able to convert him, and that's simply not possible at the present due to his-"

"Sssshhh!" Tigerhawk interrupted, placing a finger in front of his mouth for emphasis. "Quiet. Do you hear that?"

Gryphtron tuned his audio sensors to their maximum sensitivity. "Conversation..."

"Yes," Tigerhawk growled. "Predacon conversation. No doubt Scourge has sent some of his minions to get to Optimus Primal as well- only they want to kill him, not convert him."

* * *

"You take that back!" Terrorsaur screeched, firing up his aft engines to catch up with Jetstorm.

"Nuh-uh-uh," Jetstorm said, smirking as best as he could in his dragonfly mode. "It's true, and you know it is, shriek-meister."

"I am NOT like Starscream! Him and me are NOTHING alike! Not to mention that the guy's just a floating spark in space now!"

"Y'know, Jetstorm's got a point," Injector said from ahead of them both.

"How!? How are Starscream and I similar at ALL!?!"

"Well, let's count them, Beaky, even though I know it's hard for you to do that," Jetstorm said in a mocking tone that only his smooth voice could muster, turning his head to face Terrorsaur. "One, you both have shrieking voices. Two, we all know he had it in for the original Megatron, and you-"

"WATCH OUT!" shrieked Terrorsaur, banking to the left as Jetstorm slammed into a flying tiger that had suddenly risen out of the treetops in front of them. Tigerhawk quickly transformed and grabbed Jetstorm by the neck, dragging him out of sight and into the tropical canopy.

"Predacons, transform and en-GAWK!" Terrorsaur was interrupted as Silverbolt followed suit and quickly rose above the canopy, grabbed the Transmetal pterodactyl , and dived back into the trees.

"Injector, fly higher!" yelled Skyshadow, a dragonfly/lizard fuzor who was flying behind the rest of the party. Injector obeyed, and they both rose far enough above the canopy to prevent any more surprise attacks.

"...So now what?" Injector growled.

"We transform and attack those little farts, that's what," Skyshadow muttered.

* * *

Tigerhawk slammed Jetstorm to the ground, as did Silverbolt a few seconds later.

"Time to abort your mission, Predacon!" Tigerhawk growled menacingly.

"In your dreams, freak show!" Jetstorm taunted, right before spraying Tigerhawk with a face full of slime.

Tigerhawk sputtered and let go of Jetstorm out of reflex as he tried to wipe the muck off with his paws. Jetstorm quickly transformed into his robot mode and flipped Tigerhawk off of him- right before Dinobot barreled him into a tree full-force, knocking the Predacon out.

Terrorsaur transformed and started to arm-wrestle with Silverbolt in an attempt to throw the fuzor off of him, but Terrorsaur wasn't as strong as he had thought, and failed to do so.

Before the Maximals could beat Terrorsaur senseless, however, a transformed Skyshadow and Injector flew down through the canopy, flipping out their weapons and engaging their enemies.

Given that most of the shots were aimed at him, Silverbolt quickly dove off of Terrorsaur, the energy bolts instead hitting the abused Predacon right in the chest, sending him shrieking in pain.

"Thanks a LOT, Injector!"

"You're welcome!" Injector sneered while firing off a few more bolts at the Maximal fuzor.

Skyshadow, meanwhile, focused on Gryphtron. Gryphtron quickly dove out of the way, but not before Skyshadow had scored a few direct hits on Gryphtron's right wing, rendering it useless for the time being.

"Foul demon!!! I shalt smite thee!" Gryphtron roared, immediately taking out his energon crossbow and firing a couple of exploding arrows at Skyshadow. Skyshadow easily dodged the blasts and fired a huge ice beam out of his left hand/head, freezing Gryphtron's feet in place.

Gryphtron continued to fire at Skyshadow as best as he could, but the position his feet were frozen in made it nigh-impossible for him to maneuver effectively. Within a few more nanoclicks, Gryphtron was blown into stasis lock.

Injector, however, was not so lucky when it came to his surprise attack. Tigerhawk had been ready for such an encounter, and, finished with wiping off his face, quickly transformed into his robot mode and lifted himself back into the air with his immense wings. Firing off a few rounds from his wrist cannons, Tigerhawk managed to pepper both of Injector's wings with holes, and the hideous Predacon crashed to the ground with a howl. Now ground-bound, Injector was quickly taken out by Dinobot.

Meanwhile, Terrorsaur had gotten back on his feet and was trading blows with Silverbolt in an all-out brawl. Silverbolt had managed to get in the first punch, but Terrorsaur, being able to create plasma balls directly in his clawed hands and hurl them at Silverbolt with lightning speed, was slowly winning.

By this time, however, Tigerhawk had finished taking out Injector, and helped Silverbolt bludgeon Terrorsaur onto the ground. Taking out one of his feather swords, Silverbolt aimed it at Terrorsaur, just an inch from the Predacon's neck.

"Now... do you surrender, vile fiend, or do I have to-"

"LOOK OUT!"

"AAAAUGH!"

* * *

Even from Terrorsaur's point of view- and he wanted nothing more than for Silverbolt to be scrapped at that moment- the next few seconds after Silverbolt had asked him to surrender was permanently etched into his memory for life, it had frightened him so much.

Silverbolt had been interrupted by Tigerhawk, who had seen the... thing... coming a split-second before and had yelled for Silverbolt to watch out. Before Silverbolt could react, the small vicious thing leaped on the back of his head, clawing into it without pause, explanation, or reason. Before any one else could even aim a missile at it, it had buried itself completely in Silverbolt's head, slashing away into his microprocessor- needless to say, the fuzor was in stasis lock before he even had realized what had happened.

Terrorsaur shrieked, Tigerhawk was stunned, and all of the other 'bots present were offline- except for Dinobot. Long used to such surprise attacks, Dinobot quickly fired his optic lasers at the thing, blowing both it and part of Silverbolt's head into a tree trunk nearby. Silverbolt's head and the thing inside of it fell down to the ground, silent.

Terrorsaur and Tigerhawk had by now been shaken out of their stupor, and Tigerhawk cautiously walked up to Silverbolt's head, still keeping an optic on Terrorsaur to ensure that the Predacon didn't try to escape. Ever-so-slowly, Tigerhawk lifted up the hollow head to find, unconscious beneath it... a bunny!?

Dinobot would have laughed out loud, had the circumstances not been so dire and downright weird.

"A bunny!?" Terrorsaur asked quizzically, walking up to the unconscious forest animal.

"And look!" Tigerhawk said, pointing to the unconscious rabbit. "It's got long, pointy fangs! AND claws!"

"Not to mention half of its body is encased in metal..." Terrorsaur said.

"Is it another Transformer?" Dinobot asked, walking up to where the animal lay unconscious.

Tigerhawk shook his head. "Too small. Even Rattrap is... was... more than three times its size."

"And my scanners aren't picking up an energy signature," Terrorsaur added.

Suddenly, just as soon as it had jumped on Silverbolt before, the animal suddenly shot up. Before any of the Transformers could stop it, the bunny leapt quickly into the forest, hopping away at an extremely fast speed.

"Tigerhawk, follow it!" Dinobot yelled.

"I'm on it!" Tigerhawk said, transforming into beast mode quickly and zooming off after the rabbit.

* * *

As much as it pained him to do so, Tigerhawk engaged his machine guns and shot down any tree that he could not easily dodge.

He had to find out who had made this monstrosity of a creature.

Diving left and right, Tigerhawk followed the bunny in its single-minded quest towards whatever its destination is.

Finally, after nearly half an hour of straight flying, Tigerhawk found what it was looking for.

* * *

"_Dinobot!"_

"Finally!" Dinobot muttered, turning on his comlink. "What is it, Tigerhawk?"

"_I've found what the animal was heading for- but you're not going to believe this!"_

"What!? What is it!?"

"_It's- it's some kind of metallized forest! It's almost like it was coated in a sheet of metal straight from Cybertron! Everything- the trees, the rocks, everything- is all covered in this! And worst of all, it's spreading slowly!"_

"Most interesting... Terrorsaur and I have worked out a temporary truce while you were gone, Tigerhawk. Everyone except Silverbolt is back on-line, albeit damaged. We will be there as quickly as we can. Dinobot out."

* * *

An hour later, Dinobot, Gryphtron, and the Predacons caught up with Tigerhawk.

"It's about time you got here!" Tigerhawk angrily reprimanded. "I'd have had an easier time surviving inside Unicron!"

Once the others had gotten close enough to Tigerhawk to see his feet through the foilage, they all gasped.

Piled around in a near-circle around Tigerhawk were dead jungle animal carcasses- monkeys, jaguars, anteaters, even large insects, having been chopped in half, pulled apart, stomped to death, or something similar. There were at least two dozen carcasses around him, and Tigerhawk had the scratches on his armor to show for it. Most noticeably, however, was that most of the carcasses were completely organic- only a few near the top still had a mechanical metal layer on top of them.

"Tigerhawk, art thou insane!?" Gryphtron asked unbelievingly. "Those animals be completely organic!"

"No. Look at their blood."

"But how would-"

"LOOK AT IT!"

The assembled obeyed.

"That blood is mixed with... mech fluid?" Skyshadow asked. "And... some other gray substance as well..."

_Poor Tigerhawk,_ Dinobot thought to himself sadly. _This must be a nightmare for him..._

"Mech fluid, yes," Tigerhawk said tiredly. "And that 'gray substance' you speak of- I examined it carefully. They're slightly-modified versions of the same Transmetal 2 nanites that Optimus Primal had on them."

"You mean-?"

"Yes, Terrorsaur. The... corruption... of these lands is because of Optimus Primal himself."

"But how?"

"Snake."

"...What?"

"No, a snake!"

Terrorsaur turned behind him and shrieked. A huge, 25-foot-long Transmetal 2 python was slithering towards him, elongated fangs bared.

Before Terrorsaur could form a plasma ball in his hands, however, the job was done. Skyshadow immediately froze the python in place in a large block of ice.

"Problem taken care of," Skyshadow smirked.

"Anyway," Tigerhawk said, getting back to the matter at hand, "It would appear that Optimus Primal's Transmetal 2 nanites, after gaining control of a body of their own, have made it their prime directive to reproduce, using their host as a means of siphoning energy into this directive. No doubt Primal must be eating at least half the time he's awake.

"Regardless, the nanites have reproduced themselves to the point where they have taken over an area of the jungle roughly two miles away. I say this because my scanners tell me Primal is roughly a mile ahead. They've apparently been able to modify themselves enough to be able to take over the organic inhabitants of this place in a similar manner that they took over Optimus and use the same process to continue to make more of themselves. If the animals are killed, the nanites simply abandon them and return back to the ground in which they have infected. However, from what I have been able to figure out, these animals are merely metaphorical branches stemming out from the trunk of the tree. They do not provide enough nourishment themselves to keep the nanites going. Our dear friend Primal is the trunk. And you all know what that means..."

"...We have to kill Primal to keep the plague from spreading..." Dinobot said dejectedly.

The Predacons smirked a little at this revelation. Luckily, the Maximals didn't seem to notice.

"That's correct... unfortunately," Tigerhawk nodded sadly. "Even if we were to somehow convert him back to the way he was, there's no way we could stop the nanites from reproducing at this point. His nanites would continue to corrupt any wildlife that came within a somewhat close proximity to him. If anyone can think of any other ideas, however, I'm open to them."

Silence.

Tigerhawk sighed. "Alright, then, let's get this over with. Gryphtron, fly Silverbolt back to the Maximal base for repairs. Even though we're not technically on their side anymore, I doubt they'll deny us use of their CR chambers in the case of an emergency. The rest of you, let's cross into the nanite-infested ground. You must be careful, though- I'm sure that if you stay in the same spot for more than a few seconds, the nanites will start to infest you. Ready? Let's go!"

Terrorsaur, Skyshadow, and Tigerhawk transformed into their beast modes to fly, while the rest followed them quickly on foot.

* * *

"Terrorsaur! To your left!"

Terrorsaur quickly charged up a plasma ball and flung it into the corrupted toucan, sending it plummeting into the foliage below.

It had only been ten minutes since they had entered this metallic jungle, but it seemed like hours. Although they had never gotten more than a few more scratches from the forest creatures, it was tiring progress. So far, they had met and destroyed nearly fifty animals, and the tide of ferocious critters never seemed to wane.

Until, they finally found what they were looking for.

"Optimus Primal!" Skyshadow shouted to the others, having spotted their target out of the corner of his optic. He pointed with one of his legs toward the rapidly-moving target.

"Terrorsaur- you're the fastest of us! Immobilize him!" Tigerhawk commanded.

Terrorsaur gulped and dove down to where Primal was gliding amongst the trees and fired a few of his plasma balls off at the Transmetal 2. Primal easily dodged, but now that he recognized his prey, he quickly changed direction and flew straight into Terrorsaur, barreling both of them smack down into the ground.

Dazed, Terrorsaur barely heard Tigerhawk yell, "Terrorsaur! Get off the ground! You can't stay in the same place for more than a few seconds!"

Snapping out of it, Terrorsaur kicked Primal off of him and, hovering slightly off of the ground, took Primal's head in his hands, and slammed it into a nearby metal tree. To Terrorsaur's surprise, the slam didn't knock Primal out, and the bat visibly struggled, trying to claw Terrorsaur's hand off. Gritting his teeth, Terrorsaur held on determinedly.

A couple seconds later, Tigerhawk flew down and continued to barrage Optimus Primal with plasma bolts until the Transmetal 2 bat finally fell unconscious.

Tigerhawk sighed. "Dinobot, hurry over here and throw me your sword."

Dinobot wordlessly obeyed.

Tigerhawk caught the sword in his hand and clenched his eyes shut, his voice shaking. "Forgive me, Primal."

Tigerhawk opened his eyes and plunged the sword right through Primal's chest- right into the bat-bot's spark.

Primal screamed in rage and pain for a few seconds before his senses numbed, and the flow of mech fluid out of the wound started to ebb some.

To Tigerhawk's surprise, Optimus Primal managed to speak, however faint and garbled it was.

"Thank... you..."

Then all was silent.

Tigerhawk slowly landed on the ground, his voice barely audible, it was shaking so much. Talking, he was careful to pace in a circle to keep the nanites from crawling up his feet. "Optimus Primal, the original leader of the Maximals in the Beast Wars, is dead. Within a few days, the nanites in this land will die out without a host, and the jungle will soon revert to the way it was. Now, let us leave this horrid place and leave Primal to finally rest."

* * *

An earwig bug transformer named Powerpinch was the watchman by the time the four damaged Predacons made it back to the base, early the next morning.

"About time you guys got back. Didja complete your mission?"

Skyshadow nodded. "Affirmative, although Primal was... hard to deal with."

"So I see. Any other Maximal resistance?"

"Not for long," Skyshadow smirked.

"Good to hear it. The boss's waitin' for a full report, inside."


End file.
